Vikings: The Story Behind Bjorn's Bear Fight

Bjorn has a difficult journey into adulthood in the third episode of Vikings: Season 4, and so too did star Alexander Ludwig. There's a dramatic showdown in "Mercy" between Ragnar's first-born son and a bear, and yes, Vikings did shoot the sequence with a real bear.

The storyline where Bjorn strikes out on his own on a quest for independence is one that Ludwig has been itching for ever since showrunner Michael Hirst explained it to him. Like Bjorn spends time away from his family in this part of the season, so too did Ludwig separate from the rest of the cast to shoot in relative isolation in northern Canada.

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"[Bjorn] feels that, in a way, Ragnar has never let him grow up. He's never become a man, he's never proved himself, so he decides he's going to go into the interior to one of the most isolated parts of Norway, live for the winter in a hut and see if he can survive -- which he does," Hirst said. "We shot that in Canada in the snow in winter. It was fantastic."

Ludwig, along with a director of photography, makeup artist and hair stylist, trekked into the wilderness to bring to life Bjorn's snowy journey of self-discovery. For Ludwig, the trust and creative freedom placed on their small crew helped underline how significant this storyline would be, both on the show and for him as an actor.

"It was one of the coolest experiences. We had to snowmobile to set, and it was freezing," Ludwig said during a visit to Vikings' set in October. "I got to see what it looks like, and it's just remarkable. It just adds this sense of loneliness and abandonment Bjorn feels being out in the middle of nowhere by himself and having to prove to himself and everyone else that he can survive out there. That was just a phenomenal experience."

Vikings: "Mercy" Photos

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Alexander Ludwig in Vikings

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Vikings: "Mercy" Photos

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So too was working with the bear. In truth, there were two Kodiac bears who Ludwig acted opposite: a boy named Whopper and a girl named Ursula, who was "a bit more feisty." Whopper had previously worked in Anchorman, among other productions. Ludwig joked that his resume was "bigger than everyone else's," but there was little comedy in the shooting of the bear fight sequence.

"I would do a scene opposite this bear and we would have this clothesline that was separating us," Ludwig explained. "The bear has been brought up to think that clothesline is electric, but it's not, so I was just waiting for them to rewrite the fact that Bjorn actually doesn't survive the bear attack."

"It's a kind of calling card of the show, that we do real things," Hirst reflected in a later conversation, on the eve of Vikings: Season 4's premiere. "Later in this season, we haul real viking boats up cliff faces and through woods. We just do amazing things, and our characters actually fight, and rowboats and all that. So the fact that Alex was put into a situation with, there were actually two real bears, in the wastes of Canada, in the snow, was part of that calling card. We wanted it to be as real as possible."

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Bjorn's desire to find his own identity offered a coming-of-age experience not only for the character, but for Ludwig. Hirst remembers him being "very puppyish" when he first joined the cast, recalling, "We had to tell him not to smile so much."

In the years since, Hirst found Ludwig has grown into the role, and considered the journey to Canada a rite of passage that both he and his actor took seriously. So seriously, in fact, that Ludwig chose to jump into icy water naked for one scene without letting Hirst know he was doing it beforehand.

"If I had know that they were going to cut a hole in the ice and let him jump naked into the hole, I might have said something about that, because that's rather dangerous anyway," Hirst said. "He took I think some risks to do that, and he just came out of it with flying colors, and he's definitely a grownup now. He's a totally different man than when I first met him."

This confrontations in "Mercy" will have a lasting effect on Bjorn, both emotionally and physically. He gets a wound on his cheek that heals into a scar the makeup department continued to apply to him during our visit to set, which was midway through the second half of Season 4's two parts. By that point, Bjorn is determined to become his own legend, and get out from under his more famous father's shadow.

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"In the first half, it's about making his father proud. In the second half, it's about making himself proud," Ludwig said of the two-part season. "It's about fulfilling his own destiny and doing it for him. He realizes that he needs to look out for himself because he's lived his life so much for other people, which I think is an arc that we all go through as human beings, especially with families. There is a time in your life when you need to decide, no, this is about me now. I need to set my own path."